Teamwork
by AllHailTheGeek
Summary: What would a Twi'lek who wants nothing more than independence want with a quirky, self-conscious Jedi-in-disguise? Or a teenage Mandalorian, or a jobless Lasat, or the Temple younglings' resident misfit? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Trials AU. Rated T for the kind of thing that goes on in Outer Rim cantinas.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Star Wars Rebels** **belongs to (de juro) Lucas and Filoni, and (de facto) the fandom. Not to me. Sadly.**

* * *

The Mission.

That was how they always referred to it, in the time that came after. His first solo mission undercover, her first shipping run without her father tagging along, the mission when they met: it was all that and more, but eventually they just started calling it The Mission. _The_ Mission. If either said "Mission" or "The Mission," the other understood what it meant. That was all there was to it.

* * *

Caleb Dume made sure his lightsaber was well hidden in its secret pocket in his trench coat. Then he checked that the Padawan braid was tucked away in his nerftail, folded twice so as to be almost indistinguishable from the rest of his hair. Then he ran through a tally of his supplies: satchel with change of clothes, hygiene products, and datapad; comlink; mini-tool kit; rebreather; cable launcher; hand blaster - because no self-respecting freighter pilot would go without one - lightsaber again. He chewed his lower lip, inspecting his reflection in the tiny 'fresher mirror, trying to decide whether the baldric looked more convincing on this shoulder or the other one-

 _"Padawan! Are you done yet? You're going to the Outer Rim, not a Senate gala, for stars' sake!"_

Right. Vanity was forbidden. Breathe. Focus. Caleb palmed the 'fresher door open, entering the living room and the presence of his Master, whose usually bottomless patience was clearly wearing thin. "Oh. Good. Don't worry, Caleb, you look fine. We've been undercover before. You know how to do it. You'll be alright."

They left the quarters together, Caleb a pace behind and to the left of Master Depa, in the traditional Padawan's place. He garnered a few strange looks for the getup that was so clearly non-Jedi, but nobody commented.

Non-Jedi getup...it didn't bother him as much as some Jedi, but the waistband of the trousers _itched._ "Why do I have to dress up _now_ again?"

Depa sighed. "I told you last night, the ship belongs to Green Gundark. The owner probably placed hidden cameras, to make sure you don't mess with it. You'll have to be in character as soon as I drop you off at the spaceport."

Caleb stopped in his tracks. "You're dropping me off at the spaceport?! Forgive me, Master, but I can fly a speeder by-"

His Master stopped as well, turning to regard her Padawan fondly. "I know, Caleb. Jedi aren't supposed to indulge in sentiment, but...this is special for me too."

"Oh." Heat rose in his cheeks. "So...you never told me: who am I?"

Depa smiled and continued walking. Caleb followed. "Your name's Kanan Jarrus, age 22 standard." The heat rose further; he was only twenty-one, really... "You're fresh out of flight school on Vandor, but between student loans and wanting to buy a ship someday, you need some quick credits. Green Gundark is a no-questions-asked freight company. They'll hire just about any being with no bounty on his head."

"And I already submitted a job application, and they'll try me out with this ship? You're right, Master, whoever owns this company must have holocams aboard. No way they'd trust me without them."

"The Council concurs. This way." They crossed the hangar, Master Depa grabbing a key chit from the requisitions droid on the way, and climbed into the speeder. It was a four-being model, open cockpit; maybe all the two-being speeders were taken. There was a time when Master Depa would have insisted Caleb ride in the backseat, but those days were long gone, so he took shotgun. They zoomed off into the Coruscanti morning, and the consequential morning traffic.

When the speeder finally pulled to a stop in one of the crowded dropoff lanes at Senate Proxima InterSector Spaceport (Terminal Cresh), called Proxima Cresh for short, Caleb didn't get out immediately. He found he needed a moment to center himself. From now on, he wasn't Caleb Dume, Jedi Padawan to Master Depa Billaba. He was Kanan Jarrus: a novice light-freighter pilot, testing his skills for the first time.

His Master pulled him into a one-armed embrace. "May the Force be with you, _Kanan."_

"And with you as well, _Master Jedi."_ He tossed her a salute and jaunty - if somewhat shaky - smile by way of a send-off, then turned and dove into the throng of beings going to and from the spaceport.

Caleb - no, Kanan - couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, some way, the Force was with him already, guiding him down an uncertain path, a hyperlane whose terminus he couldn't possibly predict.

* * *

Hera Syndulla walked forward, stumbling slightly, hands out in front of her as her father walked behind her, hands over her eyes. "Almost there, sweetie," he assured as he led her out the back door and into the "backyard," a grassless plateau used more often for landing ships or aircars than for normal backyard things.

"One...two...three...surprise!"

As Cham's orange hands flew away from her face, Hera couldn't help but gasp.

He'd said he would be getting her something special for her first shipping run alone. She suspected it was partly as an apology for the spat they'd had a couple weeks ago on the subject: she'd literally had to shout him into letting her take this run at all. But this…! She'd been expecting an astromech or some starting credits or something like that, not an _entire ship!_

It was a Corellian freighter, a VXC-100 by the looks of it, painted pale gray with a few artful splashes of Ryloth dust. Hera had to crane her neck to see the top of it. Its stern end was facing her; she spotted two sublight engines and a hyperdrive, as well as two smaller sublights that might have belonged to a dinghy, the rest of which was ensconced in some sort of shuttle bay. Her father pressed something into her palm: a key chit emblazoned with a string of numbers and letters in Aurebesh.

"Go on. Try her out. This'll get you into her for now; you can change the access codes later if you like."

Hera, at long last, found her voice. "How...why...this is amazing, Dad, but...what are we going to name her?"

"Up to you, Hera. She's yours. And as for how and why...I was planning to give you the _Freebird,_ but the _Freebird_ finally gave up the ghost last week. I sold it for scrap and bought this secondhand while I was in Lessu. I got the chance to fly her myself; she's got right good handling, but it might be nice if you could find a copilot to- Hera, what's up?"

Hera wasn't listening. Instead, she gazed at the new ship's paint job, expression rapt as an idea dawned on her. "Gave up the ghost...she's almost silver, reminds me of smoke, and didn't you say you got her used? She could've come from anywhere, and looking a little like a cloud...Gave up the ghost. Gave up the _Ghost_. That's what I'll call her, the _Ghost_."

Without warning, Hera turned and flung her arms around her father, sending him stumbling backwards. "Oof! Easy, Hera, you're a big girl, you know…" He returned the embrace. They stayed there for a moment, in the eternal Ryloth sunrise, the newly-christened Ghost standing sentinel.

The spell was broken by Kaiva sticking her head out the back door. "Wow, Dad! I was gonna say dinner's ready, but what's this?"

"Hope you made some to go for your little sister, Kai-Kai. She's gotta leave in…" Cham checked his chrono. " _...merblatzu!_ Twenty minutes, if she wants to make Denon by the time I said she'd be there!"

Hera narrowed her eyes. "Dad! What time did you say I'd be there? How close are you cutting this exactly?!"

"Relax, Hera. It's not as close as you think. I told Surjik you'd be there by 1700 hours, four standard days from now-"

"Seventeen hundred hours?! Do you know how long it takes to get from here to the Inner Rim, even on the Corellian Run the whole way? And the traffic is awful at Denon- I'll be lucky to get there by, oh, eighteen hundred at the earliest!"

"Okay, so maybe you'll have to push the hyperdrive a bit-"

 _"Dad."_

Cham fell silent, struck dumb by the venom in his daughter's voice. Hera shot him an icy glare, took the plastoid box of food mutely offered by her sister, and pressed the button to lower the Ghost's boarding ramp. It did, with a hiss of pistons.

"Hera…"

She stopped, one step away from the top of the ramp. Cham sounded hesitant, almost apologetic. Well, she wasn't having any of that, but...surely it wouldn't hurt to-?

"Goodbye, Dad," she said, without turning around, then disappeared into her ship, leaving Cham and Kaiva staring at the space where she'd been.

Cham had the oddest feeling that, even though Hera had promised to come visit after her first run, he wouldn't be seeing her again for a long, long time.

* * *

 **A/N: Yes, I'm crazy for starting another story, even though I actually have this one mostly planned out in advance. Yes, I knew I was crazy already, new story or no new story.**

 **Also, Kaiva is the beige/green Twi'lek girl Cham picks up in the TCW episode Liberty on Ryloth. I headcanon that she is Hera's older sister by about three standard years. Caleb is twenty-one years old at the beginning of this story, meaning that Hera is seventeen and Kaiva twenty.**

 **Reviews are never necessary, but always appreciated!**


	2. Chapter 2

It took Caleb longer than he would've liked to find his ship. He took a couple wrong turns, ending up in the food court and a gigantic rental-speeder showroom among other places; he decided at the last minute not to ask a loitering Republic Security Bureau officer for help, because Caleb Dume might not know his way around this spaceport, but Kanan Jarrus certainly would. And he was Kanan Jarrus now, right?

Kanan Jarrus finally took a hike when Caleb rounded a corner and nearly crashed into an enormous Besalisk staggering, drunken, out the back door of a cantina. Hoping no one would ask what he was doing, he located the nearest information kiosk and searched up berth Besh-243/Aurek. Caleb downloaded the resulting map to his datapad and set off - in the proper direction this time - at a smart clip, but not before pausing a moment to glance around self-consciously, fiddling with the collar of his coat.

 _Some pilot you are, Caleb. A freight runner, even a rookie one, needing a_ map _of Coruscant's busiest spaceport? Ye Force._

Berth Besh-243/Aurek turned out to be one space of two in the enormous room, open to the sky, with "Besh-243" painted over the door. The other berth, which he supposed was Besh-243/Besh, sat empty. But the closer one, Aurek, held what was clearly his ship. He could tell the thing was Kuati, and would therefore get decent fuel economy, but it wasn't much to look at. Neutral gray with a bit of green trim here and there, cockpit in the blunt nose and living quarters in the underbelly delineated by a few small viewports. Name in Aurebesh painted on either side: _Ferocity-3_ , probably pertaining to whatever wing this ship was usually part of. The entire dorsal side of the ship looked like a metal version of the shell on a Naboo swamp tortoise. That would be the cargo hold, then. Enormous, as he'd suspected.

Caleb dug his datapad out of the satchel and tapped around on it until he found the code Green Gundark had sent to some commsat array at the Temple, thinking they were sending it directly to him. He entered the code into a keypad on the _Ferocity-3_ 's side; the boarding ramp descended, pressure pistons hissing. Caleb walked aboard, then lifted the ramp again with the remote key hung on a hook on the wall. He looked around the ship that was to be his home for...well, he didn't rightly know. A few weeks? Maybe more?

He'd come out into an oval-shaped lounge, with curved benches like restaurant seats attached to the walls and viewports above them. There weren't any other furnishings, but a glance upward soon explained why: half the ceiling looked exactly like another boarding ramp, which, when lowered, would slant up into the hold. The center of the room would need to be clear to accommodate it. With both ramps down, hover-palettes could easily be guided up or down them. A clever arrangement, really. Caleb suspected he might find some form of movable furniture aft, in the living quarters.

He had time to explore those later, though. Caleb headed forward, through the single door on that end of the room, and nearly tumbled flat on his face. He hadn't noticed there was a step downward into the cockpit, only twenty or so centimeters but still enough to make him lose his balance. Regaining his footing with Jedi ease, he plunked himself in the left-hand pilot's chair and inspected the controls. They looked fairly standard. Decent comm set and holodisplay, several autopilot programs including evasive maneuvering and docking with another ship, purely electromagnetic grav compass– maybe a tad antiquated, but he could live with that. The ship was lightly armed at best, possessing only a couple turbolasers and weakish shields, but the lasers could be fired from either seat, pilot's or copilot's.

Caleb reached over and started the automated preflight checks, taking a moment to familiarize himself with the layout of all the most important buttons and switches. "Preflights, primary stabilizers, repulsors," he said to himself, going through the oft-practiced list. "Retract landing struts when you're in the air, thrusters when preflights are finished, sublights when Coruscant Air and Space Traffic Authority gives the go-ahead, secondary stabilizers when you leave atmosphere, calculate the jump – no astromech, Sithspit, so that'll have to be manual – one final check on compass calibration, then you're clear for lightspeed."

He patched a transmission through to the droid at the spaceport authority, which advised him to belay taking off until a truly gargantuan yacht passed overhead. Upon receiving the all-clear, Caleb guided the _Ferocity-3_ up through the roof – or lack thereof – and into a holding pattern. Where he waited for what seemed like a couple hours but was actually only thirty-four minutes according to his shipboard chrono. Finally, finally, the incoming-transmission signal buzzed, and he patched the C.A.S.T.A. through. _"Ferocity-3, please confirm flight plan for Denon via Corellian Run, refueling stop Duro,"_ said a cybernetic voice through the comm.

"Copy that, Traffic Authority. Flight plan confirmed," Caleb replied. "Standing by for exit vector and jump point." The information came up on the holodisplay; he plugged the jump point into the navcomp, and watched as a route out of atmosphere showed up in blue. Caleb took the helm, soaring into the ionosphere along the prescribed route before entering his exit vector and calculating the jump. With that done, he made sure every last system was in order, then pulled back on the lever and eased the _Ferocity-3_ into hyperspace.

* * *

Hera found quickly that it was difficult to stay mad when you were looking around your very own ship for the first time. The ramp led directly to a large cargo hold, with a ladder up to an observation platform and what looked like a gun turret. The ladder continued upward to another level. Hera climbed it, and found herself just outside the cockpit. Four seats, typical control configuration for a vessel that was originally Corellian. Nothing special– except, of course, that this cockpit was _hers,_ which made it more special than any other cockpit she'd been in to date.

A whiff of fried flatbread and Rylothean spices from the food box made Hera's stomach rumble. That would have to wait until she was in hyperspace, though. She set the box down on the copilot's seat. With the ease of long practice, Hera ran through the preflight checks and powered up the repulsors, getting a feel for how they handled before switching on primary stabilizers and thrusters. The landing struts folded in of their own accord – _how nice, that's automatic,_ Hera thought – and she rocketed up and away.

She was about to shift to sublights for the flight out of atmosphere, but something stayed her hand. Banking gently enough to not upset her supper, she took the Ghost in a wide arc, back over the Syndulla residence. Her dad, appearing no larger than a flutterwing from this height, waved. Hera almost waved back, but realized that he couldn't see her and settled for turning the forward floodlights on and off, on and off, until she was too far gone and her home was a dot on the horizon far away.

Cham had warned her once that space would be lonely. She'd scoffed at the time, since getting out on her own had been her dream since childhood, but now…

Hera shook her head roughly. _This is what you wanted. Get it together, focus on the flying. You have a rendezvous to make._

Her sublights ignited with a subliminal hum, higher and rougher than a hyperdrive but less like a whir than thrusters. She'd learned how every type of engine sounded a long time ago. Once out of atmosphere, she played around a little, testing out every system she could think of that applied directly to her piloting. The steering yoke handled marvelously for a freighter; the secondary stabilizers worked like a charm; disabling the grav compass did exactly what it was supposed to, which was send her into a wild corkscrew, the ship having lost track of which way was "up." The compensators did their best, but Hera still felt her center of gravity shift around a bit. If they couldn't even handle a grav compass failure, she'd have to upgrade them soon.

Despite the slight jostling, however, the food was none the worse for wear. Good.

Hera had to reach all the way across the panel to hit some of the buttons involved in calculating her first jump, along the Hydian Way. It was no short stretch– Hera nearly toppled out of her seat trying to get to the furthest one! Clearly this ship was meant to be flown by two...but that didn't mean Hera would be taking on passengers anytime soon. The _Ghost_ was her ship, hers and no one else's.

Space might get lonely eventually. But for right now, Hera was fine the way she was, alone and free.

The stars smeared into starlines at the bidding of her hyperdrive lever, and then to swirling blue.

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry for the incessant lack of updates! I was dumb and decided to write a scene from smack dab in the middle of the story last week...so that's done, but it'll be a while 'til I can use it. Force be with everyone!**


	3. Chapter 3

After two and a half days of nothing to do except the xenobiology homework he'd been putting off for almost a week, Caleb finally eased back on the hyperdrive lever, bringing the Ferocity-3 back into realspace a safe distance from Denon. At the intersection of the Corellian Run and the Hydian, and an ecumenopolis to boot, Denon had some of the worst space traffic jams in the galaxy. It would never do to come out right in the middle of one.

Caleb switched on his ID beacon without having to be told. It would save the undoubtedly overburdened traffic control staff a little work, at least. Sure enough, a few seconds later, a droid told him over the comm that his identification had been verified, as had his plan to land here, and to _"please follow heavy freighter_ Aether Pearl _at a safe distance as your recommended approach vectors coincide exactly. Welcome to Denon."_ In all fairness, the ship that brought up the name _Aether Pearl_ on his sensor display looked less like an _Aether Pearl_ and more like a _Giant Hunk of Badly Painted Durasteel that May or May Not Survive the Next Hyperspace Jump_ , but it wasn't Caleb's place to judge. With a sigh, he settled his ship into a course directly behind the great junky thing. If the Force was with him, he wouldn't have to follow the eyesore of a vessel for more than fifteen minutes.

The Force was not with him.

A full two standard hours later, Caleb yanked the _Ferocity-3_ into a hangar bay forming one entire floor of one of Denon's innumerable skyscrapers, dusk falling like a purple-gray cloak over the city. _Finally!_ Trying, with limited success, to release his frustration into the Force, Caleb powered down everything that needed to be powered down and lowered the boarding ramp.

A couple pilots were loitering in the hangar, around a barrel with a few glasses and a bottle on top of it; they took a curious gander at Caleb, sizing him up, then went back to their conversation. For a moment, Caleb panicked - _oh Force, what if I screwed up the disguise, am I walking right, am I acting right, what if I fail the mission before it even starts_ \- and then realized he was being silly.

 _Focus,_ said a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Master Depa. _Breathe. There is no emotion, there is peace._

Caleb sighed, then pressed the button on his key to raise the ramp again and lock the ship. He made his way over to the other pilots, wondering which of the four identical doors was the proper way down- or up, he supposed. As he drew close, one of the pilots, a yellow-skinned Devaronian woman, called in a thick Outer Rim drawl, "Welcome, lad!"

"Uh…" Caleb hedged, unsure how to respond.

The Devaronian laughed and gave him a friendly clap on the back, steering him over to the other two pilots. "Shy one, eh? 'S alright. Shy ones got all the secret tricks 'n' traps, that's what I always say. Me name's Cassada Ebejon, call me Cass. This 'ere's Sori," she said, indicating the young male Zeltron who shot Caleb a dazzling grin, "and this is–"

"Choss. Choss Hanerath," the third pilot, a large human man going a little gray about the temples and a little round about the midsection, broke in. "But ye won't hear anyone else callin' me that. I'm Chosski Head t'all these ol' space dogs, or just Chosski if ye're feelin' nice."

"My- my name's Kanan Jarrus," Caleb managed to get out. "Nice to meet you."

"Ooh, fancy manners!" Sori chuckled. "Here, kid, wet your whistle a bit." The blue-haired pilot handed Caleb a shot of whatever was in the bottle. Caleb knocked it back; it turned out to be Corellian whiskey, the really good stuff.

" _Don't_ call me kid," Caleb grumbled, wiping his mouth. He couldn't be too mad, though. The guy was obviously just trying to be friendly, and he had just given Caleb some of their precious drink.

"See, what'd I tell ya?" Cass announced triumphantly. "There's one of 'is little tricks, right there! Don't worry, Kanan or whatever yer name is, we won't call ye kid if ye don't want us to. We don't pick on rookies, ain't that right, Chosski?"

"Damn right!" the man called Chosski Head roared jovially. He tossed back his own shot, then said, "Now, laddie, ye been lookin' a little lost, methinks. How 'bout ye let ol' Chosski show ye 'round the place?"

Caleb gave Chosski what he hoped was a jaunty smile. "Sure thing."

Chosski heaved himself off the small crate he'd been sitting on, with a noticeable pop of vertebrae. "Aargh. 'M gettin' old, more's the pity. Soon enough I'll be stuck somewhere dirtside, no more soarin' 'round the galaxy with gods-know-what belowdecks...ah well, gotta happen sometime. This way, lad." The middle-aged spacer led Caleb past quite a few parked freighters, about half of which looked almost identical to Caleb's Ferocity-3, to one of the four doors. It opened for them onto a turbolift, which Chosski piled into and beckoned for Caleb to join him. Caleb did. The door closed; Chosski pressed one of the buttons on the wall; a couple seconds' descent later, the lift dinged open, revealing what looked like a cross between a Jedi Temple refectory, a freight pilots' union meeting, and total chaos.

"This is the mess hall. More'n one sort o' mess in here, I'm afraid."

Well. _Mess_ was one way to describe it. Caleb would have gone with "what happens when you stick a bunch of beat-up tables and chairs in a gigantic room with a bunch of unruly spacers and leave them to figure out the interior décor on their own," but again, it wasn't his place to judge.

"Oi! Choss!" Caleb and Chosski both turned their heads toward the sound of the voice. A humanoid man with salmon-colored skin and at least fifty headtails instead of hair was making his way across the disorderly room. Caleb had to think for a moment to remember the name of his species: Mikkian. There were a couple of Mikkian Jedi, weren't there? Twin sisters? Caleb couldn't come up with their names, but by then the guy had reached him, and he arrested Caleb's attention completely. His entire presence spoke of energy, as if he constantly had somewhere to be, something to do. His clothes were a little nicer than any of the pilots'. Caleb immediately guessed he was a supervisor of some sort.

"Well, well, Choss, look who you found! You must be Kanan Jarrus, no?"

"Yes, um...sir?"

The Mikkian chuckled. "Surjik is fine. That's my name, see; Mikkians don't have last names. It's a little complicated. You're...oh, an hour and a half late," Surjik said, glancing at his wrist chrono. "But I'll let it slide, 'cause it's your first time and all. And besides, your partner's late too!"

"Wait... _partner?_ "

* * *

Hera did, in fact, push the hyperdrive more than a little. She actually went so far as to strip out the compressor and do a couple tweaks on the regulator systems at Algara, the first of her two refueling stops. After that the _Ghost_ didn't last so long on a tank, but it didn't matter because now the little freighter went faster as well. It came out even on the distance front, and to be honest, Hera was glad to have the compressor out of there. The hyperdrive – _her_ hyperdrive – definitely didn't need all that extra stress.

She dropped out of hyperspace at Denon only half an hour behind schedule, but that stretched into an hour, then an hour and a half as she was forced to sit in traffic. She pulled into Surjik's hangar at long last; the shipboard chrono read 1832 hours. _Daisjo!_

Hera turned everything off as quickly as she could without screwing something up, then ran down the boarding ramp and locked up the Ghost remotely. Spotting a couple other pilots having a drink a little ways off - she thought she recognized the Zeltron from when she'd visited this place with her father, but she couldn't be sure - she dashed toward them, calling, "Hey! You two! Any idea where Surjik is?"

The Devaronian shrugged. "No idea. 'E was in the mess 'all last I checked, but 'e could be anywhere now. I don't remember seein' ye 'round 'ere before; what's yer name, little lassie?"

"Hera. Hera Syndulla. I'm sorry, but I can't talk– I'm late enough as it is!"

The Zeltron took a gulp from his shot glass, then grimaced sympathetically. "Ah. You'd best scoot along, then. But just between you and me, I wouldn't be too worried. Surjik's nice to rookies."

It stung Hera a little to be called a rookie, but she didn't comment on it. "Thanks!" she shouted over her shoulder, already making for one of the hangar doors, praying it was a personnel lift and not one of the huge ones used for cargo.

"Anytime!" the Devaronian hollered.

It was indeed a personnel lift. Hera panicked for a moment, blanking on which button corresponded to the mess hall, but then remembered Surjik explaining how it was only one floor down from the hangar for the convenience of hungry – or thirsty – spacers, when she and Cham had visited. The lift was a fast one, taking only a second or two to drop a floor and let her out into the almighty chaos of a cafeteria. She spotted Surjik's pink head-tendrils instantly.

Surjik was standing in the opposite corner, talking to the old spacer who called himself Chosski Head and another, younger man Hera didn't recognize. "Yes, partner," he was saying to the younger man. "In fact, here she comes right now."

"Sir," Hera panted as she jogged up to the three of them, "I can explain–"

"Ah, no need," Surjik assured her. "Like I was saying to Kanan here, a little late your first time on the job isn't a big deal."

"Wait...I'm a little confused," the young man – Kanan, apparently – said. "I thought I was just gonna get my run from you and go. There was never anything said about a partner."

Hera's eyes narrowed. "And you told _me_ I'd just get a no-frills run, which I assumed meant alone! Surjik, you _know_ all I wanted was to get out on my own–"

Surjik raised his hands, attempting to placate both her and Kanan at once. "It's just for one run, Hera. Mostly for this kid. He's a Core-worlder, in case you couldn't tell. I wanted someone with a little more experience on the Rims to go with him. It's his first run too."

"I'm not babysitting a greenhorn who's probably never left the Core!" Hera exclaimed, at the same time as Kanan growled, "Don't call me _kid!_ "

They stared at each other, a little startled by the simultaneous outburst. Hera noticed, offhand, that his eyes were some sort of blue-green color, unusually pale for his tanned skin and dark brown hair. Surjik took the opportunity to speak again, albeit a little nervously. "Sorry, Mr. Jarrus. That was rude of me. But honestly, Hera, it's not as bad as you think…"

"Yeah, it's really not," Chosski broke in. Hera had almost forgotten he was there. "Really, Hera, ye should be thankin' yer lucky stars. Tandem mission? That happens maybe four, five times in yer entire life! The rest are just you 'n' the ship 'n' cold empty space, ye get what I'm sayin'?"

"Me and the ship and empty space happens to be exactly what I want!"

Chosski sighed and shook his head. "There's just no convincin' ye, is there? Wait a coupla years, a hundred, two hundred freight runs, check back with me then. Ye'll wish ye'd made the most o' this." He lapsed into melancholy silence.

Hera swallowed hard, cracking down on her temper as best she could. Once she was certain she could speak without accidentally shouting, she said curtly to Surjik, "Alright. I'll take it. If you promise to let me go alone next time, and if _Mr. Jarrus_ promises to behave himself around my ship."

* * *

 **A/N: A little longer chapter this time, which is a good thing- my chapters are painfully short for my snail-like update pace... Hope this makes up for it a little.**


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